The Madness Behind The Maddness

I enjoy listening to music way too loud, staying up past a normal bedtime, and challenging myself on things I shouldn’t be challenging myself on. For example, I once stayed up for almost 30 hours just to see if I could make it a full 48 hours. That isn’t a healthy life choice, kids, don’t do that.

But it hasn’t always been a bad thing. I started my YouTube channel just to see if I had what it took to become an internet personality known as a “YouTuber.” At the time, I had no formal editing experience and my only camera was my iPod touch. But I did it anyway because I wanted to see if I could. Two years later, it’s pretty much the same content but in glorious 1080 p resolution thanks to my fancy new camera.

I wrote a book on the sole reason that I like to read and one day I finally went “hey I could probably do this” and so I did. It took over five years of revisions, but finally I’m in the process of publishing it and discovering just how absolutely useful the past five years have been for my book.

FUN FACT: I’ve made every friend I currently have after I wrote the initial first draft so I sort of forget to tell people that I’ve written a book and so it’s sort of a fun surprise for them whenever I casually mention it. Including now. Surprise!

When my high school newspaper lost their graphic designer, I made my own graphic designs for my column even though I had no experience in graphic design. The result is that I now use an odd combination of basic Photoshop and Microsoft PowerPoint to create graphics. It’s very weird and in hindsight it’s somewhat unconventional, but hey it works.

I may or may not have abused this power.

The point is that everyone gets their start somewhere. Some people do the sane thing and take classes or an apprenticeship or ask for help. Me? I just go for it and see what happens. If I fail, I learn. If I succeed, I challenge myself to make it better. There’s really no method to this madness, but it’s definitely a challenge I’m willing to take.